Tennessee’s legislators pander and posture recklessly on lots of issues, but few could harm the state’s economic prospects as much as trying to put tests for drivers’ licenses under English-only rules. Regrettably, that’s precisely the purpose of a bill that a legislative committee wrongly approved Tuesday.
As if to rub in the insult, the committee’s approval followed a a lawmaker’s rude harangue to a Volkswagen lobbyist in response to the lobbyist’s expression of concern about the legislation.
Mark Smith, the VW lobbyist, said he believed such a “one-size-fits-all, English-only, no-exception legislation is perhaps not the gesture of Southern hospitality that we think that companies looking to Tennessee are looking for.”
“That speaks closely to blackmail,” Rep. Tony Shipley, R-Kingsport, snapped back. Mr. Smith countered that he was not intimating that VW would pick up and leave. Rather, he said, he was concerned that by acquiescing to the English-only rule, VW might look like it supported such an action, when it clearly does not.
That’s a telling comment on foreign companies’ sensitivity to blatant anti-immigrant legislation. It’s a sentiment the Legislature should seriously consider before a final vote on English-only legislation that seems mainly to be witless pandering to the anti-immigrant sentiment that has focused heavily the past several years against undocumented Hispanic immigrants.